The big news 🔊

We’re absolutely thrilled to announce that we’ve partnered with A Cloud Guru, alongside Summit Partners and Elephant VC, in their Series B round. As technology and automation disrupt nearly every industry, Australians and people all over the world are recognising the need to upgrade their skills and sometimes even change careers entirely.

A Cloud Guru offers a way to do exactly that. It’s already helped hundreds of thousands of people from around the world to reskill for the digital age.

🗞️ The tech sector in Australia has suffered a string of incredibly disappointing policy defeats (including further R&D cuts) — Paul Smith from the AFR and John McDuling from the SMH share their views on why this is, and what needs to happen going forward. Alex McCauley, CEO of StartupAUS, also penned a great piece about what the political landscape currently looks like for Australia’s emerging tech sector

🎧 Daniel sat down with InnovationAus for their “Election Podcast” — he shares his views on the government’s plans for innovation and his wishlist for a more well-constructed debate around the future of tech in Australia

💰 OneVentures has reached the first close on its venture credit fund totaling $45m — they’re looking to invest in companies with $3–20m of recurring revenue

📈 SF-based location-based tracking app Life360 is due to list on the ASX 10th May — apparently US companies see the ASX as having “lower valuation requirements, but plenty of appetite for tech stocks” 🤔. Bailador-backed Stackla (a user-generated content marketing platform) has also announced its planning to IPO later this year

What’s on? 📅

15 May (Melbourne): John is speaking at the Future of Work Summit — he’s excited to take the stage with the team at Expert360 to talk more about the “freelance economy”, and Joyous to discuss why “it’s now about people, not jobs”!

We’re seeing $50m+ rounds led by local VCs, and $100m+ rounds led by local VCs along with our superannuation partners. As our tech funding system matures and scales, this is great news for founders who can be supported from seed to series C/D and beyond 🚀